Last year, I lived three metro stops from the Santiago Bernabéu stadium in Madrid, and so I spent many evenings watching Karim Benzema. Real Madrid’s French forward — who last month won the Ballon d’Or for world’s best player, aged 34 — spends much of each game strolling around. He is scanning, clocking the location and directional movement of every player around him, as if that trademark bandage on his damaged right hand concealed a GPS. Then, when he suddenly breaks into a sprint, he is telling his teammates: “I have seen a gap. Give me the ball now.”

Once they feed him, he keeps scanning even while on the ball in the penalty area. He takes every split-second the defenders leave him until he identifies the optimal choice, whether that’s shooting or passing off any part of either leg. When the ball goes in, Benzema generally even celebrates calmly. He had seen the goal coming before anyone else did. In Qatar, he aims to win the World Cup with France. Benzema (who before this year had never finished in the top 15 for the Ballon d’Or) exemplifies a trend of this tournament, and indeed in modern sports: many of the best players are entering middle age.

A crop of men born between 1985 and 1988 are among the biggest names going to this World Cup. Leo Messi, probably still the world’s best footballer, is 35. Cristiano Ronaldo remains Portugal’s most reliable goalscorer at 37, the same age as Croatia’s playmaker Luka Modri?, who recently joked (if it was really a joke) that he might play until 50. Between them, this trio has won every Ballon d’Or since 2007. Those who felt Messi didn’t deserve his seventh award last year were backing Poland’s centre-forward Robert Lewandowski, now 34. No player born after 1987 has won the Ballon d’Or. The world’s best young footballer, Norway’s forward Erling Haaland, 22, isn’t even going to Qatar because his team didn’t qualify.